One of the commonly recycled plastic products is carbonated beverage bottles. In a common form, these bottles are constructed primarily of polyethylene terephthalate of a generally cylindrical shape. A base which fits on the bottom of these bottles is typically made of polyethylene and is of a shape which permits the bottle to stay upright when it is placed on a flat surface. The bottle has a cap which screws onto threads in the neck of the bottle, and this cap is typically constructed of a harder plastic than the aforementioned other parts of the bottle or this cap is constructed of aluminum.
The bottles are typically returned with the caps screwed onto the bottle. For the recycling process, it is sometimes, but not always, acceptable to recycle a bottle with a plastic cap on it, but it is almost never acceptable to recycle a bottle having an aluminum cap thereon, unless this cap is separated from the other bottle parts and the caps are recycled separately from the plastic portions of the bottle.
When these carbonated beverage bottles are collected, there are almost always a mixture of bottles with aluminum caps and bottles with plastic caps. If there are any aluminum caps, then these caps must be removed and separated. In some instances, depending upon the material used, the plastic caps also need to be separated from the rest of the material to be recycled.
The most common way to solve the aforementioned problem is to hire people specifically for removing caps from bottles and separating the caps and bottles before the bottles are crushed and sent on to be recycled. This is a very time consuming and consequently, expensive proposition. Consequently, there exists a need for an easier and less expensive solution to this problem.